(A newer and better version of this article can be found on Christ and Pop Culture.)
I have a sliding scale for my how severe my depression is at any given point: the more power metal unironcally inspires me, the more depressed I know I am. Generally, I enjoy a jaunt through a Rhapsody, Theocracy, or Dragonforce album for what they are, a collection of interlacing meedly and squeedily guitars that sprint with breakneck drumming while someone yodels over the entire thing about dragons, days of yore, and various types of good and evil magic. I accept it for what it is, and what it is delightfully cheesy, like taking in an old fairy tale, but the only people around to chronicle it are Eddie Van Halen and a bunch of musically-open-minded bards. Much like realizing that DnD wears a story cloak to clothe the fact that it’s just bunch of nerds having fun fighting over math, realizing that power metal is meant to be taken with a grain of irony is part of its enjoyment. By pressing play, you agree to wink and to put safeties on your suspension of disbelief.
My working theory is that my depression breaks down this armor between mind and spirit, exposing my deep need for transcendental themes. I long for paragons and paladins, for virtuous warriors worthy of tapestries and songs, because I know that somewhere, He exists. This ever-connected, ever-angry, and ever-on world belches dragon smoke and tells me that fairy tales are just that, there is no Examplar and all your heroes are dead. Middle-earth was the product of a professor that shared drinks with another professor who created Narnia, and nothing more. They point to nothing, they signify nothing, and that is why you shouldn’t let these stories of bravery in the face of world-threatening foes find your way into your heart. They just don’t exist anymore. However, in my weakened state, I can’t keep the firewall in place, and my heart soars with the guitar solos and falsetto voices screaming about a power that can defeat evil for all eternity. I know that there is a truth that these stories are intrinsically drawn to: we need a hero, we need a power outside of ourselves, and (with apologies to C.S Lewis) evil wizards can be slain.
Lord knows that hits home these days.
Last year, I rediscovered my love for this genre when I providentially clicked on a Gloryhammer music video and was greeted by a dude dressed in a full elven cosplay wielding a comically large hammer while flying a submarine through space. The keyboardist was playing a holographic circle projection to fire off attacks at our heroes, and the entire thing crescendos with hammer dude firing off a blast of lighting by swinging his hammer at the floor of his spaceship. All this goes on while the lead singer belts out a song about apart of something called the Hootsforce.
Honestly, if you don’t think that’s awesome, I don’t know if we can be friends. You can read my posts, but I don’t see myself on your Christmas card list or going to shows or even Tim Hortons together. We’ll just have to settle for a slighty-awkward-recognition-nod kind of acquaintanceship, knowing deep down we’re just too different to be friends. Let’s just accept this loss of potential buddiness with a stiff upper lip.
A few weeks ago, I came across another power metal band, this one less of a lovechild of Flash Gordon and Thor and more LARPing with guitars. I’m gonna put the video right here so you can watch it before you go on to the rest of the po-
HEY. I said watch the video.
Fellowship’s The Saberlight Chronicles has been on a constant loop in my car, my headphones while working, and my earbuds while doing dishes. I haven’t felt this uplifted and inspired by an album since maybe 2011’s Becoming the Archetype’s Celestial Completion or Oh, Sleeper’s Children of Fire, 11 years since I felt my spirit connect with a metal album at just the right time in my life. It’s a heartfelt, honest, refreshing, fast and catchy giant ball of cheese, and I don’t think the band would have it any other way. Rather than covering mystic battlefields and mighty deeds, it deals with the brooding of a hero unsure he’s meant to be a hero. This is not Gloryhammer’s Angus McFife, faffing about with full knowledge that he’s here to smash goblins and chew bubble gum, and he’s all out of bubble gum. This isn’t Dragonforce’s Herman Li throwing down a year-long solo so the other guitarist can chug a beer. It’s not Rhapsody of Fire riding Dio’s coattails into Merlin’s tower, chanting their unholy war cries. This is a band born from the internet fame-and-fortune obsessed 2000s, whose hero is unsure of their place in the world. They would take the ring, but they do not know the way. As their track “Oak and Ash” so simply says:
Here I stand, I’ve got my heart in hand
It’s made of oak and ash
Someone tell me, am I worthy?
Be at peace, please help my heart release
All of this anxiety, someone tell me, am I worthy?
The entire album’s theme seems to be attached to one of self-doubt and a longing for direct answers to assuage that hesitancy. Again, this hits so hard in a world where so many don’t understand their merit without some form of attention. We’ve dunked ourselves in the deep end of the dopamine pool and come out dripping with a false sense of what intrinsic worth is. Loneliness in the digital age is cavernous, and without some kind of pointer toward what can truly give us strength to carry on, we can lose sight of the imago dei.
Fantasy literature is phenomenal at this because it takes the things we fight every single day and depersonalizes them. It puts them on the backs of wargs, the horror of Dementors, in a sleigh with the White Witch, giving us space to struggle with them in a realm where they can’t actually hurt us. Power metal does the same thing, but attaching it to the common grace of music, which can (no pun intended) amplify those themes through melody. It has a way of driving it home in us through imagination that many well-meaning lectures and audiobooks in the world couldn’t do. I don’t mean to demean the avenue of literature, but music has a very unique set of tools that can chisel away even the most reclusive and hardened of hearts.
So I’ve spent the last hour-and-a-half typing this all out because some lads from the UK wrote a bunch of songs while dressed like hobbits and it’s made my heart soar toward the God that has laced the world with these transcendent desires. Their album channels the heart of a world that weeps with John in Revelation 5, for who is worthy to conquer evil and to set rights the wrongs of the world? All of the stories and myths in the world point to the True Myth, the longing for whom cannot be satiated anywhere else. He is our Paragon, the High King, the One in whom we find rest from our strivings for worth.